Biodiversity case study
Since living things are part of an
ecosystem and all the things that
construct it, they are affected by
everything in that system. Weather and
other living organisms could affect living
things.
Successful organisms will manage to
make the required changes and
modifications that allow them to meet the current
conditions. The changes are triggered by modification in the
genetic inheritance to survive. If we look at the organism
that adapted to the condition we will find some differences
from the original population, and the one the adopted would
be the fit.
Reviewing the literature, we have many theories that try to
explain adaption and the way organisms evolve. The natural
selection theory provides some explanations, other theories
use fossils, comparative anatomy, and finally DNA studies to
trace and recognize evolutions.
Biodiversity
When we survey living things we find a massive number of
different things, they have so many similarities and some
differences among them. Scientists were looking for a
system that will allow them to group and classify all those
living things and avoid confusion and conflicts among living
things. Taxonomy was the science that solves this problem.
Taxonomy recognized and identified living things and placed
them in groups from the most to the least level. At each
level, the groups have similarities among them. This was
very useful because of the great number of different
species.
Taxonomy starts by identifying the Domains as the most
inclusive level. Three domains were identified and they are:
1. Bacteria: contain microscopic unicellular prokaryotes
2. Archaea: bacteria that look like unicellular bacteria
3. Eukaryote: includes most of the known living organisms
in which they are further organized into kingdoms.
Five kingdoms are recognized as the Monera, Protista, Fungi,
Plantae, and Animalia. Each kingdom is then grouped into
different phylum’s and each of them is broken into several
classes. Each class contains different orders and each order
has several families, and family into genus and finally each
genus have several species.
The Scientific Method
The processes of science
come via a mechanism that
builds knowledge utilizing the
scientific method. This
mechanism starts from just an
observation and leads to a
theory or a law.
Observation is the first step
when a researcher noticed a
condition that he cannot
explain or understand. This
will trigger the process in which he will start to investigate
the conditions. The investigation starts reviewing the
previous data and literature to see if this observation was
addressed earlier in the literature and will help him in the
formulation of his research questions or what is known as
the hypothesis.
After proposing the research questions the research will
design an experiment to test the questions. At the end of
the experiment the data and results will be collected and
references about the questions, which lead him to reject,
some hypothesizes and accept the others.
The final stage would be to conclude the observation, this
conclusion will explain them, and several conclusions
usually will create a theory. When the theories reach more
acceptance via more scientific evidence then it will be
known as a law.
